


Withdrawal.

by glanmire



Category: Doctor Who, Harry Potter - Fandom, but not a crossover
Genre: Drug Addiction, Gen, as a metaphor for magic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-23
Updated: 2014-02-19
Packaged: 2018-01-05 19:26:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,070
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1097724
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/glanmire/pseuds/glanmire
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>If we replace the magic with something a little more realistic.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

Jackie's daughter was an addict. It was almost a cliché that Rose's dad was dead, that she didn't care about her job, she found her life uninteresting, that she turned to drugs as an escape. That didn't make it any less painful for Jackie though.

Rose met a man who called himself the Doctor. He was the type to get off on that, that he was handing out the pills but making people worse. It was what he would consider a very clever joke.

He wore a leather jacket and smiled.

He was terrifying, and always on the run.

The little blue pills he gave her daughter, well he called them the tardis, didn't he? Jackie didn't know what it was supposed to mean. The only thing that she got out of Rose was that they made her see the stars.

The first time Rose disappeared with the Doctor, they left without a word and were gone for an entire year. Jackie had called the police and all. Proper investigation, she'd had no choice, even though she hated getting those idiots involved. She didn't want Rose getting caught with drugs and being locked away. What good would that do anyone?

But when the two came back, that's when she knew. She asked her daughter where she'd been, why hadn't she called. Travelling. That's the only answer she got.

No explanation, no elaboration. Travelling.

That madman with his boxes of drugs, he'd sit at her kitchen table sometimes, and smile from ear to ear. Fantastic, he'd say. Fantastic. Nothing fazed him. Jackie felt like murdering him, just to wipe that smile away, but she was scared. Scared of what he was capable of. Scared of that ugly weapon in his pocket.

So she'd just smile too, and make tea, and quietly urge Rose to stay, to leave him, though her words meant nothing to her daughter.

One day Rose came home with a different man. This guy called himself the Doctor as well, and he was almost worse. He tried to look respectable in a suit, as if that was fooling anyone. Jackie presumed the old one had finally been caught by the police, or killed in some gang fight. She hoped so anyway. Rose didn't seem too bothered about the change. Her daughter was just happy when she was getting her supply of tardis.

Well, it ended as suddenly as it started. There was a battle of sorts, police and gangs involved, and of course the Doctor and Rose were running around in that mess.

Eventually, the police managed to grab Rose, but the Doctor got away.

He never visited. He couldn't. The police kept an eye out for him, he was a wanted man. If he went near Rose Tyler again, he'd be locked away for the rest of his days.

Jackie got Rose back, but her daughter had changed. She'd seen the stars and knew what they were capable of. And as for the Doctor, he was probably off ruining another innocent life, destroying a family. They'd catch him one day. The Doctor couldn't run forever.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> How the Dursleys saw Harry.

Vernon married a lithe, respectable woman named Petunia, and they had robust baby boy called Dudley, and for one glorious moment it seemed like all was well.   
But Petunia's rotten sister Lily had fallen into the wrong crowd when they were only kids, and Lily's loser husband only worsened her situation.   
The Potters were drug addicts, and they ended up getting killed in some feud by some big bad overlord, a real shady fellow. Vernon pictured him as their drug lord, come to collect his dues, but the whole story was vague. No one had ever bothered to give the Dursleys the facts. All he knew was that they'd been on the run from their killer for months, like cowards.   
Vernon had no pity for them. If you get mixed up in that kind of filth, you have to know it's going to end badly. 

Irresponsibly, they also had had a kid during all that mess, but then that was the Potters summed up, wasn't it? Irresponsible.   
The boy, Harry, was dropped on Vernon's door, just a baby in a blanket, already scarred. The Potters had never wanted anything to do with the Dursleys when they were off their heads high- thought they were better than the common decent folk who worked for what they got- but when things fell apart, it was the Dursleys who took the boy in. None of Potters' druggie buddies were clamouring to mind the kid now, were they? Too much responsibility for scatter-brained scum like that. 

The Potter boy was born with a weakness, a predisposition to the drugs. Vernon and Petunia did absolutely everything they could to quash the weakness in him- to wean him off the habit he'd probably learnt at his mother's tit- and shelter their own son from the madness.   
Those drugs ruined lives - just ask the Potters- and Harry was drawing it into their house, exposing Dudley to those dangers. If they treated Harry harshly, then it was for the boy's own good; anything, absolutely anything that would stamp the addiction out of him. 

Vernon and Petunia failed. They failed Harry. At the age of eleven- eleven, still only an impressionable child- he got mixed back up in his parents' crowd. After that, it was all over. First a terrifying man attacked Dudley, then Harry attacked Vernon's sister, sabotaged Vernon's own chance of promotion, had his lot damage the Dursley's house and attack Dudley again, then Harry dragged Dudley's near-comatose body into the house and swore he hadn't hurt him, and then finally Harry, a grown man at this stage, forced them to abandon their home and go into hiding because of the feud he was caught up in; he pleaded that he was afraid that his enemies would go after them.   
After all of the damage he'd caused, they never denied him refuge in their home, and now he was forcing them to leave that same home. Selfish, that's what he was, endangering them like that. Irresponsible. 

Vernon never saw the Potter boy again after that last encounter. He and Petunia reared Harry and he left them with a threat over their heads as thanks. They sold the house and started again, and like his parents before him, Harry's name was never spoken, just another failure that was best forgotten.


End file.
